Well in Cata it’s hard to have an item that has no uses whatsoever. At the very least a lot of junk will be usable as kindling.
The biggest problem I see with having random trash items is that it would increase item-memory overhead by a potentially substantial amount which would not be good for keeping the game as slim as it is in memory usage 
meh, more items wouldn’t have a noticeable impact on memory unless we went nuts and spawned them everywhere.
I would like it if vehicles could be spawned randomly on roads to show how deserted the world is. (And to find cars easier :P)
hey, perhaps you can make a railgun out of the magnets… or ammo for one…
Go fallout 3 and build a junk-launcher. Mwhahaha, this game needs more makeshift weapons, all of them is not enough.
oh the junk-launcher… I want one of those ingame
You guys should add a catapult or a ballista, now that would be awesome.
Add a complex trap system and link it to a snare trap.
This is a Zombie Brute and about thirty mixed Z behind it.
This is a snare trap
The Zombie Brute steps onto the Snare trap
The Ballista fires!
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
It dies.
You hear a Thud from the north.
I personally think this entire game should go as Dwarf Fortress as possible. Except maybe the geology.
Yeah, excellent ideas.
I always wish that the maps were less town-centric. Houses here and there, clusters of houses in the boonies with a little diner and a gas station, gas stations along long roads, etc. And it’s a good opportunity to spawn zombies in places other than towns. And give people slightly safer areas to loot.
I enjoyed every good, unbalanced thing I encountered. Maaaybe once it was too much just to push through, but then - I did fire like a couple of hundred rounds before it was over.
As for parameters that fuel the “random” routine, what really peaks is “scientist carcass dump” - it could make more sense. It feels like everyone’s a lab dawg and for no good reason. If some of them are technicians, or even guards, they should pack something sweet after all.
a random touch i’d like to see is a boarded up house in town. all the windows are ductaped or something and the door has been destroyed. inside there’s blood stains, maybe a few bodies and almost a dozen Z’s…
old survivor hold out that was lost? i’d LOVE to find these dotting towns, +10 to immersion.
In a similar vein, I’d like to see campsites and campgrounds out in the wilderness. A tent and a rollmat thrown together in a little clearing in the forest with burnt logs and empty cans of spam around. Maybe a dead survivor with a pack of wolves around the corpse, or a torn page from a diary pointing the way to the survivor’s new location.
Cottages as a good excuse for small chains of houses along river/lake edges, similar in function to the small highway stops mentioned earlier in this thread.
Guys, theres one basement you forgot. The guy-who-lives-right-next-to-the-evac-shelter-that-has-a-basment-that-when-you-go-down-it-goes-into-the-evac-shelter-but-when-you-come-back-up-you-can’t-got-back-up-to-the-room-with-the-basement
Man cave basements. Sofa and a broken tv, some scattered electronics, pool table, beer empties EVERYWHERE. Maybe some cigs and a magazine or two. A booze alternative to the liquor store and restaurants.
We need dead dogs and cats.
Perhaps, fire hydrants and pens, pens for snorting the coke, perhaps. Perhaps?
Creature variety helps too!
Crows and zombie crows. Or vultures, same deal but bigger. Unless those are already in-game and I haven’t seen them (I will feel silly if so.) I realize with the talk of z-levels going around, flying animals could get complicated fast. So I figure something simpler would be nice:
Like, ^^ for flying crows and vultures, which could be written so only ranged/thrown weapons have a chance of hitting them. They could circle (track?) the player or nearby corpses. They wouldn’t attack while in flight, but they would move quickly.
vv could be for grounded crows and vultures, typically near corpses. Attacking would progress fairly normally for player and grounded birds both, unless the bird attempts to take flight again and flee. Grounded birds would move slowly but would have biting/pecking, and clawing both.
Something like “The crow lands!” (or “takes flight!”) would be sufficient, and then the bird instance on the map replaced with its appropriate version, copy its current hp from the instance it’s replacing for continuity.
Zombie versions could be ^/v, and ^/v respectively.
I realize the ^ symbol is currently used for several traps; I figure context (the fact it’s moving) ought to prevent most if any confusion.
I think that “true” flying creatures should be kept out till we get a “true” 3d game universe.
Other wise we get weird hacky solutions, like destroying a v and spawning a ^.